Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.
A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy.
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
Having met on a train, a smooth-talking psychotic socialite shares his theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder to an amateur tennis player — a theory he plans to test out.
Charlie Kaufman is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.
A British crime novelist travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order to work on her next book. However, the unexpected arrival of the publisher's daughter induces complications and a subsequent crime.
Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.
In 1940's Florida: After a botched murder, a corrupt detective falls in love with a jazz singer whom he is sent to kill.
A bank employee uses a loophole in Argentine law to concoct the perfect crime, planning to reap the rewards of his embezzlement after serving six years in prison…
Newspaperman Harry Powers has had it writing for those stinking tabloids, but he may have just found his golden goose...if he can keep his head...
When a car bomb explodes on the American side of the U.S./Mexico border, Mexican drug enforcement agent Miguel Vargas begins his investigation, along with American police captain Hank Quinlan. When Vargas begins to suspect that Quinlan and his shady partner, Menzies, are planting evidence to frame an innocent man, his investigations into their possible corruption quickly put himself and his new bride, Susie, in jeopardy.
A lone private eye investigates a murder alongside his alternate personality, leading to the discovery of a closer connection to the case.
Paroled after serving four years in prison for armed robbery, James Winton returns home to his wife and father to make amends. However, when James is implicated in the recent murders of old acquaintances, the police detective who put him away last time is determined to make him pay at any cost.
An egotistical failing author must face reality to save himself and those around him.
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.
Mrs. Elizabeth Bright Murdock hires Marlowe to find an old rare coin, the Brasher Doubloon, that belonged in her deceased husband's collection. Marlowe begins investigating, but quickly finds himself entangled in a series of unexplained murders.
Private eye Phillip Marlowe wants to get out of the detective racket and into crime writing. But when he's called to the office of editor Adrienne Fromsett, it's not to talk about his story ideas — she wants him to locate the missing wife of her boss, Mr. Kingsby. The assignment quickly becomes complicated when bodies start turning up.